Cash Money - why are the AIs rolling in dough & I'm a broke puppy?

It happens every game... I'm not running a deficit, really, but I barely scrape by, especially compared to the AI. Last game, on Prince, even, by mid game, the Iroquois regularly had 5K in the bank & earning a min of 100 GPT... and that was with one sea route (the rest were land).

I know I go a little hog wild on the buildings (before BNW, I would build everything I could in ever city - it is a stupid little sense of completion I had), but now I focus on science and cash buildings, followed by production & culture, then happiness. I only do the happy happy joy joy buildings if my empire needs it. As for my military, I keep that as barebones as possible

I just need to be pointed to a good guide for moneymaking, I think. I've done the Google & keep finding vanilla (or CivIV) articles... any advice or pointers to good write ups would be most appreciated.

Two words: Trade Routes.

Since there is much less money to be gotten from the land (no more gold from rivers and coastal tiles), the main mechanism to get gold is through trade routes. Build caravans or cargo ships and make trade routes with nearby AI or other civilizations that will generate money for you. Note that you don't need roads. It's not the connections between cities like you have in your territory. Once you've built a caravan or cargo ship, simply click the trade route option from their action menu.

thats fine early on but to know what your doing wrong would have to see a save or a screenie to see whats up
i actually have the opposite problems in my game (i play on prince too but only because i dont like a challange) often the ai has little to no money and im rolling. as venice i was getting 600-700 at the end of the game (i won culture victory) and the closest ai was getting was about 40 gpt i was giving them money so that they could make research agreements

Trade Routes are so important in this add-on. You can go pretty damn long in the game without a single market/bank, so long you have heaps of trade routes.

Cargo Ships > Caravans

Cargo Ships will earn you more $$$ over the game than anything else will. Depending on the cities chosen you should be getting average +12-25$/turn with a Cargo Ship trade route.

Landlocked countries in BNW suffer from near economic holocaust because they are limited from the sea. But you only need one sea city to spit out cash with Cargo Ships. Caravans are good for the very early game when there aren't any cities to connect a Cargo Ship to or you don't have any coastal cities yet.

The truth is, to be relevant in terms of cashing in, you will need a coastal city or two. It's so important because 75% of this game's gold output will be from Cargo Ships.

In BNW, Carthage is one of the strongest nations, I find. With free harbors, Dido gets long-range Cargo Ship trade routes from the beginning of the game, not to mention the ability to screw everyone else's up with the Quinquereme. Grab the +2 science/city connection pantheon belief, and stock up on coastal cities with liberty.

From there, she has large gold output and science from very early on. Pick up an appropriate ancient/classical wonder like Colossus or The Great Lighthouse and you own the oceans for the next 2,000 years.

I've tried it a few times, it's a pretty damn good strategy, and really helps with gold.

If you want a nation that's assured to make $$$, try Venice. Although he's majorly gimped by not being able to build new cities, the waterfalls in Venice are made of gold and the Palace is studded with diamonds. Problem is he's pretty easy to invade so you have to play it right with your neighbors. If you're starting next to Greece/Germany/France or another hormonal warmonger as Venice, you're probably screwed. Not to mention Venice has very little happiness issues. At this stage in the game, Venice probably has the potential to make the most money of any of the civilizations.

Also my personal experience... Make one coastal city really attractive to other civs... have like 3 lux/strat goods, build the money buildings the EEC and such... in my current game i'm making more money of traderoutes from other players to my cities then from my own routes to them.... Just be a good trading partner (and protect the routes a bit.... it is worth the investment...)

Thanks for all the responses!

I've been using trade routes, but trying to diversify, not having more than one per city. I'll try to set up just one economic center & see where that gets me.

I also tend to let the random number generator choose what Civ I get to play

I saw a babylonian caravan on turn 16 on emperor. *shrug*

The AI also gets a lot of gold from bullying city states. I know this because PtP tells me every time it happens. And it's not an insignificant amount of gold either. Sure it starts at 50 but very soon I see them offering 200+ gold tributes. Easy money baby! I should get me some of that too!

http://imgur.com/CWtZ29k

Trade routes help, but city connections should be creating the bulk of your gold in a wide empire. I have 28 cities and eclipsed everybody else in every way, military might is more than everyone else combined. in the final era of techs at turn 621(Epic speed)

I grow my cities big, I spend lots of money on happiness and if I missed the wonders that create lots of happiness, I use my diplomacy skills to bribe other civs into war with the person who has the ones I want. Eventually, I can get everybody to denounce them and then starting the war to wipe them out doesn't hurt me diplomatically. I had big happiness problems until I conquered Rome and got the wonder that gives you -10% unhappiness from population. My happiness went from ~5 to ~45

The AI uses the same code to prioritise as puppet cities, I believe, and those tend to prioritise gold production. Additionally the AI plays very wide, and always builds roads between its cities, so it will earn a lot from city connections.

Playing on Emperor I've actually been pleased to find that the AI's gold income usually looks much the same as my own, or at least when it's greater is not excessively so - previously the AI was quite visibly "cheating" with its gold bonuses.

Yes, the AI will use trade routes just as human players do, but I think their effect is overstated; even full embargos rarely seem to send the AI into negative gpt. The AI isn't going to be bringing in any more cash that way than a human player - the difference in AI budget is probably mostly due to extra city connections, in my experience the most lucrative source of income (other than Tithe) for most civs.

I've been using trade routes, but trying to diversify, not having more than one per city. I'll try to set up just one economic center & see where that gets me.

Click to expand...

Having one or two trade hubs is a good plan. You want to centre your trade on cities with multiple luxuries and strategic resources and those along rivers - usually you won't have too many of those. Trade route gold also appears to count towards the gold you're getting from city production, so markets etc. will count it (I'm not sure if this is the case for science production).

My problem is the early game when I'm a warmonger. It just sucks. I was playing Russia yesterday. Got ~18-20 horses, traded around 10, that was nice. Got around 18 Iron too. I couldn't sell the rest of my horses, so what could I do? I trained Horseman and Chariot Archers, of course. 6 Horses and 2 Chariots, plus some Composite Bowman for an early rush. I have to say, Horsemen are better than I though. It was on Emperor, I rushed the Iroquois fairly easily, left them with Grand River around the corner. It might sound weird, but happiness was not the problem. It was gold. -12 gpt. Hell. I had 2/2 caravans (landlocked start) but it wasn't enough. I was trading all my Copper and Salt (yes, a salty tundra start, awesome) and still, got to -5/6 gpt, I had no way of increasing it besides puting everyone into gold focus, and it still seemed to not be enough. I had city connections, but my cities were to spread out (damn tundra) so it was very expensive. Early warmongers are suffering a lot in BNW... and I though I'd do a Swordsman rush after that

The main reason is that BNW undid the aspect of the fall G&K patch that taught the AI how to cash rush units.
And so it's now sitting on large piles of cash again. (Note that Civ V AI has never cash rushed buildings except for the VEM & GEM mods but unlike what happened to Better AI it wasn't incorporated into base civ.)

Thank you all for the help... these are def some strategies I need to try.